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The new law isn’t perfect. But it will bring some order to a political fundraising culture that was getting out of control, with cabinet ministers out filling party-mandated quotas for bringing in cash.

From now on, corporate and union donations will be illegal, as they are at the federal level and in many other provinces. Ministers, MPPs, candidates and senior staff won’t be able to attend cash-for-access fundraisers. And annual contribution limits will be significantly lower – cut from $10,000 for individuals to just $1,200.

At the same time, third-party interest groups will be forbidden from spending more than $100,000 on advertising during election periods, and $500,000 in the six months preceding a campaign. That will curb the influence of these groups on the outcome of elections.

It’s all good, although the Liberal government could have pushed things further by, for example, clamping down on fundraising by ministers and MPPs by phone or email. Nonetheless, it’s the biggest change in Ontario’s fundraising rules in decades and deserves applause.

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The new Ontario rules have another consequence: they highlight once again how federal fundraising practice has fallen seriously out of step with evolving practice in other jurisdictions.

It took the Wynne government time to agree that cash-for-access fundraisers were outdated and unseemly. Reporting by Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn, in particular, exposed the fact that cabinet ministers were on a gruelling fund-raising circuit, meeting quotas as high as $500,000 a year to top up Liberal party coffers.

But the Liberals did finally agree to ban the practice, with the support of both opposition parties at Queen’s Park.

Their federal Liberal cousins should learn from that example. Overall, federal rules on fundraising are quite tight, with no corporate or union donations allowed and annual contribution limits of about $1,500.

But there’s a glaring hole in the system, one the Trudeau Liberals are using to raise large amounts of money for the party. Ministers, and the prime minister himself, are turning up regularly at cash-for-access events across the country. It’s perfectly legal, but it’s a tawdry, ongoing spectacle that is eroding the government’s reputation for high ethical standards.

It’s even worse since, as we have written before, the prime minister is allowing all this to happen in blatant contradiction of guidelines he issued to his ministers as they were sworn in last fall.

Trudeau told his ministers not to let anyone buy influence, and to abide by the principle that “there should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties.”

On Friday, during a visit to the Star’s editorial board, the prime minister continued to defend having ministers attend $1,500-a-ticket fundraising events. “You have to be pretty cynical to imagine a government could be bought off for that kind of money,” he said.

At the same time, though, he left the door open a crack for change down the line. He noted that it took the Ontario Liberals a while to be persuaded that cash-for-access should be banned. With that ban now going into effect, he said, “we’ll see if that’s something that would be useful at the federal level.”

The sooner the federal Liberals come to that conclusion, the sooner they will stanch the damage to their reputation. It would be good for them – and, more importantly, good for our national political culture.

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